Why was New Jersey during the Gilded Age a Democratic Party stronghold?

New Jersey from the 1860's till the mid 1890's was a Democratic stronghold even though it was not only a Union State but also a free state. What made New Jersey such a Democratic Party stronghold that even in 1880 Winfield Scott won it? And also George McLellan won it in 1864. Why? (Only because he was from there? But it doesn't explain why it stayed a stronghold or dominance in gubernatorial elections) My main question is why was New Jersey a Democratic stronghold during the Gilded Age?
 
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This is purely speculation on my part as I'm not an expert on 19th century American politics but my guess is immigrants from Europe who strongly favored the Democrats last I recall.
 

althisfan

Banned
New Jersey from the 1860's till the mid 1890's was a Democratic stronghold even though it was not only a Union State but also a free state. What made New Jersey such a Democratic Party stronghold that even in 1880 Winfield Scott won it? And also George McLellan won it in 1864. Why? (Only because he was from there? But it doesn't explain why it stayed a stronghold or dominance in gubernatorial elections) My main question is why was New Jersey a Democratic stronghold during the Gilded Age?
Winfield Scott was not a Democrat and didn't run in 1880 since he died in 1866. Winfield Hancock was the Democrat in 1880 (maybe his middle name was Scott?). The Democratic Party was a grand coalition party; northern urban and immigrant in the north with people in the South who simply stayed Democrat because they couldn't bring themselves to join the Republican Party "of Lincoln". That's why you also see progressive Democrats like Woodrow Wilson (also from NJ) and FDR from NY.
 
Winfield Scott was not a Democrat and didn't run in 1880 since he died in 1866. Winfield Hancock was the Democrat in 1880 (maybe his middle name was Scott?). The Democratic Party was a grand coalition party; northern urban and immigrant in the north with people in the South who simply stayed Democrat because they couldn't bring themselves to join the Republican Party "of Lincoln". That's why you also see progressive Democrats like Woodrow Wilson (also from NJ) and FDR from NY.

Yes it was, and I forgot to add Hancock (little embarrassed x'D:coldsweat:).

I definitely was not referring to the Great Virginian general who went against Pierce in '52.
 

Md139115

Banned
New Jersey at the time was a thinly populated agrarian state that actually had quite a lot more in common with the Upper South because of its foodstuff sales and cotton imports for the few textile mills, than with the burgeoning industrial centers in Pennsylvania and New York (neither of which had spilled over yet in 20th Century urban sprawl). People who lived in the state were conservatives through and through, and their descendants still are (more on this later).

At the time of the Civil War, New Jersey had a population of several hundred slaves that wouldn’t be freed until the 13th Amendment, the state legislature passed a resolution expressing supportp for the cause of South Carolina, it was the only “free” state to vote against Abraham Lincoln both times, and was the last Northern state to ratify the 13th Amendment. Admittedly not that stellar, and only made up by the close to 90,000 New Jerseyans who served in the Union forces.

So what happened to turn the state into a liberal one? Simply put, New York City and Philadelphia exploded in size. In the northern half of the state, the sprawl spilled completely over the Hudson as business owners of New York’s chief industries, shipping, chemicals, furniture, etc, decided that the land was cheaper and the workers plentiful on the other side. In the South, the Delaware proved to be a much more effective barrier as all the raw materials for Philadelphia’s traditional industries (iron and steel, petrochemicals, war materiel) are on the Pennsylvania side, so spillover didn’t really happen until after the Pennsylvania Railroad put the first bridge across the river below Trenton in 1896, and was far more restrained than in the North.

These tendencies were further exacerbated by the Great White Flight out of both cities in the late 1950’s and 60which saw hundreds of thousands of middle class Whites move into the new suburbs created in what had been farmland a year prior. My Father was born in 1960 just after his family left Philadelphia, and has told me repeatedly about how our home town went from being literally a one traffic light town with just about 4,000 people living in farms and hamlets all over the place to 35,000 less than 30 years later.

Today, if you want to see what these demographic changes look like, take a look at a map and compare it to this map (https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/how_your_town_voted_in_the_2016_presidential_election.html) of the 2016 Presidential Election results by town. As can be quickly seen, the blue for Hillary roughly forms a half circle in the South with a radius on Philadelphia, plus stronger than usual support along a line to Atlantic City almost perfectly corresponding to the Atlantic City Expressway. In the North, it’s a line stretching along I-95 between Trenton and New York City. Almost everything else is red. That’s what happened to those conservative New Jerseyans. There all still there in their >5,000 people towns that make up most of the state’s land area, but they just got outnumbered by some big colonies of the two major cities.
 
New Jersey's politics were really pretty similar to those of New York. (Hancock would probably have carried New York as well as New Jersey in 1880 if not for some strictly local factors like the backlash against the Democrats nominating a Catholic for mayor of New York City). Moreover,

" After the war New Jersey did not revert to monolithic Democratic control, as the border states did. For three decades in the postwar period, New Jersey's Democrats usually carried presidential elections and regularly captured the governorship but Republicans won control of the legislature twelve times between 1866 and 1894. The two parties tied several times as well. Republicans and Democrats competed on equal terms for seats in Congress, and Republicans often dominated the state's delegation on Capitol Hill..." https://books.google.com/books?id=7i70YYRzeKIC&pg=PA8
 
BTW, here is a rejection of one popular theory (that NJ was a "semi-border" state, still had a few African American "apprentices for life" in 1860, etc.): "The fact that part of South Jersey lies below the Mason-Dixon line has no historical or political meaning. The southern part of New Jersey was consistently the most politically progressive region of the state and a stronghold of the Republican party." https://books.google.com/books?id=7i70YYRzeKIC&pg=PA5 True, McClellan carried NJ in 1864 but he came very close to carrying New York, and he was "viewed as a home favorite by many residents" in New Jersey. https://books.google.com/books?id=7i70YYRzeKIC&pg=PA7
 

althisfan

Banned
New Jersey at the time was a thinly populated agrarian state that actually had quite a lot more in common with the Upper South because of its foodstuff sales and cotton imports for the few textile mills, than with the burgeoning industrial centers in Pennsylvania and New York (neither of which had spilled over yet in 20th Century urban sprawl). People who lived in the state were conservatives through and through, and their descendants still are (more on this later).

At the time of the Civil War, New Jersey had a population of several hundred slaves that wouldn’t be freed until the 13th Amendment, the state legislature passed a resolution expressing supportp for the cause of South Carolina, it was the only “free” state to vote against Abraham Lincoln both times, and was the last Northern state to ratify the 13th Amendment. Admittedly not that stellar, and only made up by the close to 90,000 New Jerseyans who served in the Union forces.

So what happened to turn the state into a liberal one? Simply put, New York City and Philadelphia exploded in size. In the northern half of the state, the sprawl spilled completely over the Hudson as business owners of New York’s chief industries, shipping, chemicals, furniture, etc, decided that the land was cheaper and the workers plentiful on the other side. In the South, the Delaware proved to be a much more effective barrier as all the raw materials for Philadelphia’s traditional industries (iron and steel, petrochemicals, war materiel) are on the Pennsylvania side, so spillover didn’t really happen until after the Pennsylvania Railroad put the first bridge across the river below Trenton in 1896, and was far more restrained than in the North.

These tendencies were further exacerbated by the Great White Flight out of both cities in the late 1950’s and 60which saw hundreds of thousands of middle class Whites move into the new suburbs created in what had been farmland a year prior. My Father was born in 1960 just after his family left Philadelphia, and has told me repeatedly about how our home town went from being literally a one traffic light town with just about 4,000 people living in farms and hamlets all over the place to 35,000 less than 30 years later.

Today, if you want to see what these demographic changes look like, take a look at a map and compare it to this map (https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/how_your_town_voted_in_the_2016_presidential_election.html) of the 2016 Presidential Election results by town. As can be quickly seen, the blue for Hillary roughly forms a half circle in the South with a radius on Philadelphia, plus stronger than usual support along a line to Atlantic City almost perfectly corresponding to the Atlantic City Expressway. In the North, it’s a line stretching along I-95 between Trenton and New York City. Almost everything else is red. That’s what happened to those conservative New Jerseyans. There all still there in their >5,000 people towns that make up most of the state’s land area, but they just got outnumbered by some big colonies of the two major cities.
At the time of the 13th amendment New Jersey had already passed a law in 1804 for gradual emancipation- all children born of slaves were born free, no importation of new slaves. At the time of the 13th amendment there was a grand total of 13 slaves left in the entire state.
 

Md139115

Banned
At the time of the 13th amendment New Jersey had already passed a law in 1804 for gradual emancipation- all children born of slaves were born free, no importation of new slaves. At the time of the 13th amendment there was a grand total of 13 slaves left in the entire state.

I think it was 16, but I could be wrong. As it is, there were none other in the whole Free states in 1860. Those last dozen or so slaves were the last slaves north of the Mason-Dixon Line (in a geographical sense since technically Delaware is also north of the line but I digress).

https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf
 
New Jersey at the time was a thinly populated agrarian state that actually had quite a lot more in common with the Upper South because of its foodstuff sales and cotton imports for the few textile mills, than with the burgeoning industrial centers in Pennsylvania and New York (neither of which had spilled over yet in 20th Century urban sprawl). People who lived in the state were conservatives through and through, and their descendants still are (more on this later).

At the time of the Civil War, New Jersey had a population of several hundred slaves that wouldn’t be freed until the 13th Amendment, the state legislature passed a resolution expressing supportp for the cause of South Carolina, it was the only “free” state to vote against Abraham Lincoln both times, and was the last Northern state to ratify the 13th Amendment. Admittedly not that stellar, and only made up by the close to 90,000 New Jerseyans who served in the Union forces.

So what happened to turn the state into a liberal one? Simply put, New York City and Philadelphia exploded in size. In the northern half of the state, the sprawl spilled completely over the Hudson as business owners of New York’s chief industries, shipping, chemicals, furniture, etc, decided that the land was cheaper and the workers plentiful on the other side. In the South, the Delaware proved to be a much more effective barrier as all the raw materials for Philadelphia’s traditional industries (iron and steel, petrochemicals, war materiel) are on the Pennsylvania side, so spillover didn’t really happen until after the Pennsylvania Railroad put the first bridge across the river below Trenton in 1896, and was far more restrained than in the North.

These tendencies were further exacerbated by the Great White Flight out of both cities in the late 1950’s and 60which saw hundreds of thousands of middle class Whites move into the new suburbs created in what had been farmland a year prior. My Father was born in 1960 just after his family left Philadelphia, and has told me repeatedly about how our home town went from being literally a one traffic light town with just about 4,000 people living in farms and hamlets all over the place to 35,000 less than 30 years later.

Today, if you want to see what these demographic changes look like, take a look at a map and compare it to this map (https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/how_your_town_voted_in_the_2016_presidential_election.html) of the 2016 Presidential Election results by town. As can be quickly seen, the blue for Hillary roughly forms a half circle in the South with a radius on Philadelphia, plus stronger than usual support along a line to Atlantic City almost perfectly corresponding to the Atlantic City Expressway. In the North, it’s a line stretching along I-95 between Trenton and New York City. Almost everything else is red. That’s what happened to those conservative New Jerseyans. There all still there in their >5,000 people towns that make up most of the state’s land area, but they just got outnumbered by some big colonies of the two major cities.



New Jersey's politics were really pretty similar to those of New York. (Hancock would probably have carried New York as well as New Jersey in 1880 if not for some strictly local factors like the backlash against the Democrats nominating a Catholic for mayor of New York City). Moreover,

" After the war New Jersey did not revert to monolithic Democratic control, as the border states did. For three decades in the postwar period, New Jersey's Democrats usually carried presidential elections and regularly captured the governorship but Republicans won control of the legislature twelve times between 1866 and 1894. The two parties tied several times as well. Republicans and Democrats competed on equal terms for seats in Congress, and Republicans often dominated the state's delegation on Capitol Hill..." https://books.google.com/books?id=7i70YYRzeKIC&pg=PA8


When you mean similar you mean large catholic working class population along with rural communities for free trade?

Could the working class immigrant populations near present day NYC (well Manhattan was still close but still) in New Jersey plus farmers who supported free trade explain it? Or no.
 

Md139115

Banned
When you mean similar you mean large catholic working class population along with rural communities for free trade?

Could the working class immigrant populations near present day NYC (well Manhattan was still close but still) in New Jersey plus farmers who supported free trade explain it? Or no.

I think you actually had a wonderful idea by complete accident. We can probably trace the growth of the urban Catholic population and compare it to the Protestant rural population and see how the state changed politically.


As this 1906 Census report shows (pages 42 and 43), the population of Catholics had only just overtaken Protestants (51.5% to 47.5%) after many decades of sustained immigration from Ireland and elsewhere. Trying to find an earlier report, but I highly doubt that the Catholic population was substantial prior to the late 1870s. After all, from 1853 to 1881, all Catholics in the state were under a single diocese (Newark) with the Diocese of Trenton being carved out after that.
 

Md139115

Banned
Incidentally, I just found out yesterday that New Jersey is one of only two states where incest is legal, provided that both relatives are consenting adults.

Does that make us extremely liberal or extremely conservative?
 
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